The Security Problem with IT Sprawl

Featured article by Rick DelGado, Independent Technology Author

With new developments in technology, companies are desperate to stay ahead of their competitors and keep up with the higher expectations consumers are adopting. There are only so many resources to leverage, so many have decentralized their IT infrastructure, according to a VMware survey that discovered “69 percent of respondents” had taken their IT management out of house.

In simpler terms, they outsource their IT and buy it “as a service,” allowing them to cut costs on creating, maintaining, and repairing this department. While this has certainly been advantageous, it’s opened doors for a new problem: IT sprawl. And it’s putting these companies in extreme danger.

What is IT Sprawl?

The more businesses outsource their IT, the less control they have over it. This applies not only to its management, but to the safety of the data itself. Some vendors are careless in safeguarding data while others are simply ill-equipped to sustain the necessary level of security companies need. 57 percent of VMware’s survey respondents have directly admitted to choosing shady options in exchange for keeping up with the pace. This leads to security breaches, loss of personal information, the theft of intellectual property, and at the very least, a halt in productivity as holes are repaired or damage is cleaned up.

Getting rid of IT “as a service” isn’t an option, so what can businesses do to solve this issue?

How Can Businesses Solve it?

1.Keep the Most Valuable Data In-House

Determining what data is most valuable to your company is a difficult task, and you can’t afford to keep it all in house in a data lake. However, by determining what information would be most damaging if stolen in a security breach, narrowing down what assets must remain unaffected in order for productivity to flow even in an emergency, and by allocating funds to keep this limited supply in more trusted hands, you’re minimizing the dangers of IT sprawl.

2.Evaluate How Great Your Security Risks Are

Since the cloud is more easily hackable than a personal server, outsourcing your IT leaves holes that can be better manipulated by potential cyber terrorists. However, these criminals focus on larger profile companies and only dig where they think they might strike gold. Evaluate how high on the priority list you may be for hackers. Then take this into account when deciding how far you should expand your IT and how much should be invested in greater security measures. If you’re a larger company, then allowing for even a little IT sprawl can be detrimental; you need to invest in better measures. However, if you’re a lower-profile company, you may be able to allow this risk, as your sprawl is significantly less.

3.Balance the Importance of Efficiency vs. Cost Savings

IT sprawl will lead to a loss of productivity in the case of a security breach, and the greater the sprawl becomes, the more difficult it is to collaborate with your outsources for the best results. This lowers quality and slows your efficiency. To solve this issue, evaluate your balance of efficiency to cost savings. How much more are you willing to pay in order to speed up productivity, and how many cuts to your budget are worth the trade-off of reduced efficiency?

4.Exercise Patience in Choosing an Outsourcing Vendor

VMware survey respondents expressed that it was an urgency to keep up with the fast pace of the industry that motivated them to choose risky IT options. Expanding a company requires immediately actionable decisions, and this leads managers to choose the most readily available option – even if it’s the wrong one. While you may be losing time and money by more carefully evaluating quality vendors, you’re avoiding significant loss of time and money in the future. You’re avoiding down time, money invested in repairing and recovering from a security issue, and time spent gaining back consumer confidence if valuable data is stolen.

The solution to IT sprawl is a customized one. There is no way to prevent all the downfalls, but by deciding how many risks can be taken in a smart fashion by your company, and how valuable your IT security and compliance really is, you can balance the two to avoid the pitfall of your competitors: accepting the results blindly.

by Rick DelGado, Independent Author

“I’ve been blessed to have a successful career and have recently taken a step back to pursue my passion of writing. I’ve started doing freelance writing and I love to write about new technologies and how it can help us and our planet.” – Rick DelGado